Film actress, born in Cherryvale, Kansas, USA. She began as a professional dancer with the Ruth St Denis company in 1921. After working on Broadway, she went to Hollywood, where her striking good looks cast her image as a lightweight, but she emerged as a talented actress in such films as A Girl in Every Port (1928). Still dissatisfied with the roles she was offered, she went to Germany, where she made her finest films, such as Pandora's Box (1929), under the direction of G Pabst. Returning to Hollywood in the mid-1930s, she again became disillusioned with the film industry, and by the 1940s she had vanished into total obscurity. She was rediscovered living in Rochester, NY, by film buffs in the 1950s and began to write about motion pictures.
| Louise Brooks | |
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Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box |
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| Born |
November 14, 1906 Cherryvale, Kansas |
| Died |
August 8, 1985 Rochester, New York |
Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) was an American actress and one of the most famous faces of the silver screen.
Born Mary Louise Brooks in Cherryvale, Kansas, this beautiful dark-haired actress is primarily known for her roles in silent films made during the late Roaring Twenties in the United States and three films made in Europe in 1929 and 1930, as well as her trend-setting "bob" hairstyle or pageboy.
Early life
Louise's successful lawyer father was usually too busy with his practice to discipline his children, and her artistic mother, Myra, was somewhat "ethereal," having told her husband from the start that any "squalling brats" she produced could take care of themselves.
Move to Hollywood
Signing with Paramount Studios, where she stayed for most of the remainder of her American film career, her film debut was in the silent The Street of Forgotten Men in an uncredited role in 1925. Soon, however, she was playing the lead female role in a number of silent light comedies and "flapper" films over the next few years, starring with Adolphe Menjou, and W. She was noticed in Europe for her pivotal vamp role in the Howard Hawks directed silent "buddy film", A Girl In Every Port in 1928.
Beggars of Life
It has been said that her best American role was in one of the last silent film dramas, Beggars Of Life (1928), as an abused country girl on the run with Richard Arlen and Wallace Beery playing hoboes she meets while riding the rails. Much of this film was shot on location, an unusual practice for the time, and the boom microphone was invented for this film by the director, William Wellman, who needed it for one of the first experimental talking scenes in the movies. Soon after the film Beggars Of Life was made, Louise, who loathed the Hollywood "scene", refused to stay on at Paramount after being denied a promised raise, and left for Europe to make films for G. Paramount attempted to use the coming of sound films to strongarm the actress, but she called the studio's bluff. It wasn't until 30 years later that this rebellious move would come to be seen as arguably the most savvy of her career, securing her immortality as a silent film legend and independent spirit.
European interlude
Once in Germany she starred in the remarkable 1928 film Pandora's Box, in which her waiflike role as the doomed flapper, Lulu, who meets her fate at the hands of Jack the Ripper after a series of salacious escapades, made her an icon of life and death in the Jazz Age. Louise then starred in the controversial social dramas Diary Of A Lost Girl (1929) and Prix de Beaute (1930), the latter being filmed in France, and having a famous, but mesmerizing, shock ending. Although overlooked at the time because "talkies" were taking over the movies, these three films were later recognized as masterpieces of the Silent Age, with her role of Lulu now regarded as one of the greatest performances in film history.
Life after film
When she returned to Hollywood, she found herself effectively black-listed, and never again enjoyed her previous success. Rumours purportedly sent out by the studios claimed she had the wrong voice for the new sound films, but she actually possessed a hard-won beautiful and cultured voice. Louise unfortunately had a life-long love of alcohol, and was an alcoholic for a major portion of her life, although she exorcised that particular demon enough to begin writing about film, which became her second life.
Rediscovery
French film historians rediscovered her films in the early 1950s, proclaiming her as an actress who surpassed even Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo (Henri Langlois: "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks!") as a film icon, much to her amusement, but it would lead to the still ongoing Louise Brooks film revivals, and rehabilitated her reputation in her home country. James Card, the film curator for the George Eastman House, discovered Louise living as a recluse in New York City about this time, and persuaded her to move to Rochester, New York to be near the George Eastman House film collection. She was famously profiled by the noted film writer Kenneth Tynan in his essay, "The Girl With The Black Helmet", the title of which was an allusion to her fabulous bob, worn since childhood, a hairstyle claimed as one of the ten most influential in history by beauty magazines the world over.
She rarely gave interviews, but had a special relationship with John Kobal and Kevin Brownlow, the film historians, and they were able to capture on paper some of her amazing personality. Running 50 minutes, Lulu in Berlin (1984) is another rare filmed interview, produced by Richard Leacock and Susan Woll in the year before her death.
A continuing inspiration
Brooks is considered one of the first naturalistic actors in film, her acting being subtle and nuanced compared to many other silent performers.
Louise Brooks as an unattainable film image served as an inspiration for Adolfo Bioy Casares when he wrote his classic science fiction novel The Invention of Morel (1940) about a man attracted to Faustine, a woman who is only a projected 3-D image. Elements of The Invention of Morel, minus the science fictional hardware, served as a basis for Alain Resnais' enigmatic Last Year at Marienbad (1961), one of the most influential films of the 1960s.
In 1987, the first book devoted to Louise, "Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star", by Rolland Jaccard, was published in France. Soon after, in 1989, Barry Paris wrote the definitive biography, "Louise Brooks", an exhaustively researched book hailed as a model for film biographies, and was an uncompromising look at Louise's life and times.
Louise also had an influence in the graphics world - she had the distinction of inspiring two separate comics: the long-running "Dixie Dugan" newspaper strip by John H.
In 1991, the synth-pop group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released "Pandora's Box (It's a Long, Long Way)", and the collage-pop band Soul Coughing released "St. Louise Is Listening" in 1998, both inspired by Louise Brooks' life.
The 1986 film Something Wild, directed by Jonathan Demme, features a main character played by actress Melanie Griffith, who sports Louise Brooks' trademark hairstyle, and goes by the moniker Lulu.
In the late 1990s, BBC Books based their description of the third incarnation of Doctor Who character Romana on Louise Brooks.
In 1995, the Louise Brooks Society was formed to promote a greater awareness of the life and films of this celebrated actress, dancer, and writer.
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